Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "I could keep going, but it's all bad. And again—it's all incredibly boring if you don't know what you're looking at. And that's exactly the point. What better way to build a reproductive police state than through a pile of dry state documents no one will ever bother to read?"
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COMMENTARY: "Here's What a Reproductive Police State Looks Like" by Jessica Valenti (with Kylie Cheung) published on her Blog 'Abortion, Every Day', July 8, 2025. (Jessica Valenti is a writer, activist, and one of the country’s most influential voices on gender and politics. The award-winning author of eight books—including the New York Times bestseller Abortion—she has shaped the national conversation on feminism for over two decades.)…"Kylie Cheung is a journalist and the author of two other books on gender and power, A Woman’s Place and The Gaslit Diaries. Currently a staff writer at Jezebel, she previously worked at the culture desk at Salon and at several nonprofits where she researched reproductive health policy.
SUB-HEADING: "Policing Pregnancy."
GIST: "Last month, I warned that we were on the verge of a major new criminalization push. I pointed to some specific and explicit signs, like the rise of ‘equal protection’ bills designed to charge abortion patients with murder, and the spike in pregnancy-related arrests.
But here’s the thing—some of the scariest portents are actually mundane. Bureaucratic, even.
Take this recent report from the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH).
In ten pages, it spells out exactly how the state plans to ramp up “enforcement” of its abortion ban—from maintaining a database of women’s abortions and fining hospitals that don’t hand over patient information, to “collaboration” between the IDOH and the attorney general’s office to help with prosecuting providers.
Essentially, it’s a government guidebook for how to punish anyone even tangentially involved in abortion.
Before I go any further, I have to remind you that abortion is illegal in Indiana.
You can only get one if your life is at risk, the fetus has a fatal abnormality, or if you’re a victim of sexual violence (and early in pregnancy).
In other words, almost no one is getting an abortion in Indiana. In fact, only twocompleted abortion reports were submitted in the first quarter of 2025.
So why pour all this state money, manpower, and energy into policing a tiny handful of abortions? Well, don’t ever underestimate how eager these fuckers are to terrorize women.
The whole point is to scare the hell out of anyone considering abortion, or helping someone get care. More than that, this document—and the entire effort behind it—is about building formal state systems that make pregnancy surveillance and policing look normal. Ordinary. Boring.
It’s the bureaucratic reproductive police state in action.
You can read the full IDOH report yourself here, but just a few highlights:
Indiana will maintain a state registry called the Database Registration of Indiana’s Vital Events (“DRIVE”). In it, you’ll find birth and death records, and—you guessed it—abortion reports. (If you’re a regular reader, you know that for over a year, I’ve been tracking Indiana Republicans’ efforts to make women’s abortion reports public records, just like birth or death certificates.)
Any doctor or hospital that doesn’t hand over women’s abortion information will face fines and disciplinary action. The IDOH says it will increase collaboration with the state’s licensing agency to speed up those punishments.
The state will ramp up so-called “legal compliance monitoring”—meaning they’ll scrutinize every single abortion performed under the ban’s narrow exceptions to ensure women really “deserved” that care. The IDOH will also funnel more information to the attorney general so he can target specific doctors or clinics.
I could keep going, but it’s all bad. And again—it’s all incredibly boring if you don’t know what you’re looking at. And that’s exactly the point. What better way to build a reproductive police state than through a pile of dry state documents no one will ever bother to read?"
The entire story can be read at:
https://jessica.substack.com/p/heres-what-a-reproductive-police
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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